Children are naturally curious creatures and with so many under one roof coupled with the fact that we homeschool, we are frequently looking things up to answer the various questions that arise. For instance, the children found that one of the chickens had laid an egg the size of a cherry tomato. We looked it up and found out that such an egg occurs on occasion, that there is no yolk inside and that they are called – by some – fairy eggs.
Here are some other fairy eggs we found this week:
- My son came in and told me he had stuck his hand in chicken poop. We washed him up and then he wanted to show me “the weird thing with the chicken poop”. I went out into the backyard with him and there was this mushroom like thing without the cute little mushroom top and it was covered in, what looked like, brown chicken poop. After some searching, we found out it is something called Devil’s Stinkhorn and that brown stuff on it is not poop but is something the Stinkhorn produces – in addition to a putrid smell – to attract flies in order to spread its spores. This has got to be the grossest mushroom in existence! I’m so glad they’re growing in my yard while everyone else gets the cute toadstools.
- Looking through a foraging book, we found out that marshmallows used to be made from a plant called the marsh mallow. Ha! It never occurred to me to ever think any deeper about the name of those little puffy pillows of sugar. The modern ones aren’t made from the marsh mallow anymore, but there are plenty of recipes online if you want to try the real deal.
https://www.southernliving.com/garden/plants/marshmallow-plant
And for some recipes:
- While reading a book on Catholic Church history this week, I found out where the word barbarian possibly came from and I could not be more delighted.
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